To invest or screen efficiently: a potential conflict in relationships governed by incomplete contracts

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We consider a dynamic trade relationship where quality is not contractible and potential sellers retain quality-relevant private information. We show that the presence of an investment technology to improve the incumbent seller's innate quality may impair the efficiency of the screening process. If the conflict is effective, the buyer has to induce an inefficient screening process or reduce the productivity of the investment technology. This conflict suggests that the hold-up problem may be more severe than predicted by models of incomplete contracts that assume complete information. © Elsevier Science B.V

Turkey's Predicament in the Post-Cold War Era

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The ultimate objective of the modern Turkish republic was to be recognized as a European state. The Cold War structures enabled the realization of that goal. Turkey's Europeanness was defined according to its geostrategic position; it became a reliable ally for the West as a buffer state against the former Soviet Union. The disappearance of the Cold War structures have brought the importance and suitability of Turkey for Europe into debate. In order to secure its position in the European order, Turkey had to redefine its policy formulations, as determined by Turkey's Eastern connections (whilst attending to the essentially non-Western elements in Turkey such as Kurdish nationalism and Islam). This article analyses how the new Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East, which is motivated to secure its place in Europe, brings out the non-Western elements in Turkey. The aim is to determine the extent to which such changes will shape Turkey's futures. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd

The Cyprus debacle: what the future holds

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This paper analyzes the Cyprus conflict from a realist perspective based on the assumption that it has implications for regional and global security. At the end of the millennium, the UN negotiations for Cyprus have been resumed, the USA has become more actively involved and the European Union has decided to open accession negotiations with Greek Cypriots. The paper proposes first that the futures of Cyprus are going to be determined by the strategic interests of the actors involved and, second, that unification of the island is becoming a more distant possibility

Managerial defections, promotion criteria and firm growth

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Junior managers' learning decisions and career expectations, promotion criteria, and parent firms' growth strategies are interdependent. We study this interdependence in a two-stage game where a junior manager invests in unobservable industry-specific learning in response to the firm's growth strategy. In the absence of a credible promotion criterion the firm is unable to insure itself fully against defections, growth is low and ex-post regrettable managerial promotions may occur. Higher growth relaxes promotion decisions and erodes managers' learning incentives, whereas lower growth generates the opposite effect but increases the likelihood of defections. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

A theory of trade concessions

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We present a model of tariff disputes and concessions consisting of an infinitely repeated game under bilateral incomplete information. Given potential agreements to be reached through unilateral or reciprocal concessions, we find that an agreement involving reciprocal concessions is reached immediately if the discount factor is large and/or the volume of trade is small. Otherwise prior beliefs about country type matter: when both countries hold pessimistic priors, immediate reciprocal concessions still occur. Very different prior beliefs lead to an immediate unilateral concession of the pessimistic country, whereas optimistic priors coupled with low discount factors may generate delayed agreements. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V

Changing priorities in maternal and perinatal health in Gert Sibande District, South Africa

Gert Sibande District is a predominantly rural district in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa (SA), with a population of just over 1.1 million. It has a high prevalence of HIV infection and pregnancy-related hypertensive disease. In 2010 the district was one of the worst-performing health districts in SA, with a maternal mortality ratio of 328.0 per 100 000 births. Various programmes were introduced between 2010 and 2017 to address major causes of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality in the district. The focus has been on HIV-related morbidity, the direct obstetric causes of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality, and health systems strengthening. During the period 2010 - 2017, there was a steady decline in institutional maternal mortality with a drop of 71% in maternal deaths over a period of 6 years, from 328.0 per 100 000 births to 95.0. However, the ratio levelled off in 2016 and 2017, mainly as a result of a changing disease profile. The stillbirth rate showed a decline of 24.4% over a period of 8 years. With perseverance, rapid response and evidence-based strategies it was possible to more than halve the institutional maternal mortality ratio within 6 years. However, with the changing disease profile, conditions such as hypertensive disease in pregnancy should be prioritised and new strategies developed to further reduce maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity

Property rights regimes and the management of resources

The property rights regime is an important link between the yield of a natural resource and the appropriation and maintenance incentives of its users. This paper discusses the theoretical background for this link and provides insights as to the function of the property rights regime, drawing from recent developments in the economics literature on optimal ownership patterns and the theory of repeated games. the performances of different resource ownership patterns are evaluated using ghe criterion of economic efficiency. The economic theory of property rights is based on the idea that, because contractual arrangements are bound to be incomplete, there is scope for opportunistic behavviour and therefore the resulting resource management is likely to be inefficient. Optimal resource ownership patterns are viewed as solutions to the problem of structuring private users' incentives in accordance with the socially desirable management of resources

The scope, timing, and type of corruption

This paper provides an analysis of the corruption problem in public organizations. It distinguishes between two types of corruption (individual/organized) and crime (bribe for a legal/illegal application), and between two occasions (before/after detection) for partial and full collusion. The integrated supervision procedure, where monitoring and review are centralized, displays higher individual corruption but a lower risk of organized corruption than the alternative, separated supervision procedure. Higher penalties and bribes, and lower rewards to supervisors, increase the risk of all types of collusion under both procedures. A trade-off is involved in the choice of the supervision procedure and penalties: Reducing individual corruption brings about a higher risk of organized corruption. © 1998 by Elsevier Science Inc

Bilateral relationships governed by incomplete contracts

This paper explores implications of interactions between noncontractibility of quality, multidimensional hidden information, switching costs and the frequency of trade on the terms of contracts in a buyer-seller setup. Optimal contractual arrangements are shown to consist of a sequence of two contracts with nondecreasing prices and nonincreasing quality and volume of exchange. In the absence of switching costs, an increase in the frequency of trade is absorbed by the first contract. For high frequencies of trade, switching costs may enhance welfare by improving the efficiency of screening through a better allocation of time between contracts. (JEL: L 14)

On Creating and Claiming Value in Negotiations

This paper presents a negotiation model that includes value creation. It shows that creative negotiation efforts tend to intensify toward the deadline, and that the deadline is determined endogenously by the tension between two motives, creating more value and claiming from existing value. When the parties can present "misleading" offers in order to claim rather than create value, the outcome in early negotiation rounds may display an impasse where any proposal is rejected without inspection, while negotiation activities such as value creation through "sincere" offers and inspection of clauses intensify toward the deadline